YUMA, Ariz. — Suspected smugglers who tried to use ramps to drive an SUV over a 14-foot-tall border fence had to abandon their plan when the Jeep became stuck on top of the barrier, authorities said Wednesday. Agents patrolling the U.S.-Mexico border near the Imperial Sand Dunes in California's southeast corner spotted the Jeep Cherokee teetering atop the fence early Tuesday, Border Patrol spokesman Spencer Tippets said. The vehicle was perched about five miles west of the Colorado River and the Arizona state line. Two smugglers on the Mexican side of the border were trying to free the Jeep when...

Two-thirds of those who have found employment under President Obama are immigrants, both legal and illegal, according to an analysis that suggests immigration has soaked up a large portion of what little job growth there has been over the past three years. The Center for Immigration Studies is releasing the study Thursday morning, a day ahead of the final Labor Department unemployment report of the campaign season, which is expected to show a sluggish job market more than three years into the economic recovery. That slow market, combined with the immigration numbers, could explain why Mr. Obama and Republican nominee...

ATLANTA — On Monday afternoon, the Georgia Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case out of Gwinnett County in which a Mexican citizen claims the state law requiring driver’s licenses discriminates against illegal immigrants. Fernando Castillo-Solis also argues that the 287(g) program, which is used in Gwinnett’s jail as well as others, including Cobb’s, allows law-enforcement officers to racially profile. The state statute at issue regarding driver’s licenses, section 40-5-20, indicates that those charged with driving without a license may not be prosecuted if they get a valid license before their court date. The Cobb Sheriff’s Office has been...

In just 14 months, Americans will be required to prove that they have federally "qualified" health insurance or face an Obamacare tax of $695 to $2,085. That is unless you are in prison, below the poverty line, or are an undocumented immigrant, according to the anti-tax group Americans for Tax Reform. When added together, those three groups total up to one-sixth of the nation's population of 314 million: 218,929 are in federal prisons, 12 million are illegals and 42 million are below the poverty line and eligible for welfare, though some fit into all three categories, according to federal reports....

Maricopa County, AZ Sheriff Joe Arpaio may be facing an onslaught of negative ads and out-of-state activists funded by leftist billionaire George Soros bent on his defeat, but it isn't stopping him from doing his job. Sheriff Joe's deputies captured 11 illegal aliens and three U.S. citizens smuggling them into the country during a traffic stop - the kind that the Obama Administration and ACLU want to stop him from performing so illegals can go free. Two of the three smugglers were armed with semi-automatic weapons and have extensive criminal records, the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office said. This brings Joe's...

SAN DIEGO — Immigrant rights activists are putting pressure on Congressman Brian Bilbray, who is running for re-election in the newly minted 52nd Congressional District, which covers coastal and northern parts of San Diego County. About a dozen young adults, some of them undocumented, stood outside Bilbray’s office in Solana Beach on Thursday afternoon, demanding he support the DREAM Act, which would legalize many young immigrants who arrived in the U.S. as children.

NEAR LA JOYA — A Texas Department of Public Safety sharpshooter opened fire on an evading vehicle loaded with suspected illegal immigrants, leaving at least two people dead. A Texas Parks and Wildlife Department game warden attempted to pull over a vehicle suspected of smuggling immigrants Thursday afternoon along Farm-to-Market Road 2221. A DPS helicopter was called in to assist in the pursuit and a sharpshooter opened fire on the evading vehicle — a policy permitted by the agency. Once the smuggler's vehicle stopped along FM 2221 near Mile 7 Road, troopers found three people shot inside, DPS spokeswoman Katherine...

Undocumented immigrants are surviving tougher immigration laws implemented in Georgia and other southern states by utilizing a surprising tool: social media. It has become an instrument to help them navigate the streets and remain undetected by police. Mario Sevilla, 24, is a construction worker; his day begins at 5 a.m. His five brothers and sisters live in Sonora, Mexico, and they all rely on the money that he can earn and wire back home. Lately, Sevilla has used social media to risk-taking road trips as far away as Tennessee to get to work. “The first thing that I do in...

Here they come again. California unions are once again meddling in Arizona politics on behalf of illegal aliens, and against the interests of their own American workers. The deceptively-named "Campaign For Arizona’s Future" - which was funded by the national mega-labor unions AFL-CIO and UNITE HERE is spending millions to try and defeat Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio. The group, which calls its campaign "Adios Arpaio", is mostly comprised of the same Los Angeles-based activists which protested in 2010 after the passage of S.B. 1070. They claim to have registered over 36,000 - mostly Hispanics - in Maricopa County, AZ to...

President Obama says he is "confident" that, if reelected, he will oversee passage of immigration reform next year, in part because Republicans will have an interest in reaching out to a growing Latino voting bloc they have "alienated" in recent years. Mr. Obama made the comment in an off-the-record phone conversation with the publisher and editor of the Des Moines Register days ahead of that newspaper's scheduled announcement of an endorsement in the presidential race. After the Register's editor publicly argued that the 30-minute conversation should be available to all voters, the Obama campaign released the transcript. "The second thing...

Latino workers in the Phoenix area are fighting back against the bullying sheriff of Maricopa County, Joe Arpaio. They’ve registered over 34,000 new voters for the November election. The “Adiós Arpaio” campaign is part of a strategy by the hotel union UNITE HERE to turn around Arizona’s anti-worker policies, in a right-to-work state where Latino workers have only recently begun to flex their political muscles. Maricopa County contains 60 percent of Arizona’s population Organizers say they feel a seismic shift in the political landscape. “I’ve never been part of something historic before,” said Lucia Vergara Aguirre, president of UNITE HERE...

Henry and Mary Alice Cisneros want the 45 mostly immigrant families served by American Sunrise, the nonprofit they founded, to take a pledge — a 10-point promise to become American. They'll pledge to learn English, and to know American customs. They'll vow to become “learning” households that meet their financial needs and make college graduation a family tradition. Most importantly, they'll agree to “carry our home country in our heart but commit to our obligations in the United States.”

WESLACO - Illegal entry into the United States is the only option for many who seek to escape poverty and violence, experts said. Immigrants put their money, trust and ultimately their lives in the hands of human smugglers. Some of those smugglers are not old enough to hold a driver's license. One of those smugglers is accused of crashing a van loaded with 17 illegal immigrants near Palmview. Life ended for nine of those immigrants. "These smugglers are ruthless people," Border Patrol Spokesman Henry Mendiola said. Mendiola is familiar with the carnage left behind by some of the human smugglers....

The American Civil Liberties Union is suing Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca on behalf of people who say they were denied bail for minor offenses after being flagged by immigration authorities. British filmmaker Duncan Roy, who says he spent nearly three months in L.A. County jails without a chance to post bail, is one of the five plaintiffs in the lawsuit, which will be filed today in U.S. District Court. Roy was arrested Nov. 15 in Malibu on an extortion charge. He was in the country legally but was identified as a suspected illegal immigrant through a federal program...

On the same day that Senate Budget Committee Republicans revealed that spending on federal welfare programs constituted the single largest expenditure in the 2011 budget, the Department of Agriculture failed to meet a key deadline to further explain its food stamp partnership with the Mexican government....(SNAP), or food stamps, which recently reached an all-time high enrollment of nearly 47 million participants. Non-citizen participation in SNAP has quadrupled since 2001 and doubled since 2008.

NEW YORK — A Corpus Christi man pleaded guilty Wednesday to plotting to assassinate Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States, agreeing to hire what he thought was a drug dealer in Mexico last year for $1.5 million to carry out the attack with explosives at a Washington restaurant. Manssor Arbabsiar, 58, entered the plea to two conspiracy charges and a murder-for-hire count in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, where Judge John F. Keenan repeatedly asked Arbabsiar whether he intended to kill the ambassador. Arbabsiar, a U.S. citizen who holds an Iranian passport, said he did. Sentencing was set for...

The Department of Homeland Security is reviewing guidelines for use of force by border agencies amid a sharp increase in agent-involved killings along the U.S.-Mexico border. The scrutiny of U.S. Customs and Border Protection enforcement practices comes in response to a request by 16 members of Congress who expressed concern over the death of a Mexican man who suffered a fatal heart attack after being Tasered by a customs officer in 2010. Among the letter's signees were Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-East Los Angeles), Bob Filner (D-Chula Vista), Joe Baca (D-Rialto) and Xavier Becerra (D-Los Angeles). A congressional staffer said that the...

An operation by federal immigration agents in Detroit set off protests from Latino and church groups on Wednesday after the officers stopped two illegal immigrants as they were dropping off their children at school. Agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement followed both immigrants, who are from Mexico, as they left their homes in southwest Detroit on Tuesday morning, officials from the agency said. Both men had children in their vehicles. One man, Jorge Hernandez, said he was pulled over by agents in unmarked cars across the street from his 4-year-old daughter’s school, the Manuel Reyes Vistas Nuevas Head Start center...

The support for voter ID in the United States remains strong, but it is clear that Democrats, who are gullible enough to buy into expletive-laden videos like Sarah Silverman’s or faux comedy video’s like Rainn Wilson’s, are more convinced that illegal voting should be here to stay. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 71% of voters think voters should be required to show ID before they vote. 66% of likely U.S. voters believe voter fraud is a serious problem, and 33% say it is a very serious problem. Yet 34% think voter ID laws discriminate against some...

The federal government is canceling a model program that gives local police the ability to check the immigration status of people they arrest in Prince William County, Va. And that has proponents of the policy, called 287(g), seeing red. “In the debate last night, President Obama said he wanted to focus in on illegals who are committing crimes,” Corey Stewart, chairman of the Prince William County Board of Supervisors and a key force in the county’s 2007 adoption of the 287(g) program, told Times247.com in an interview Wednesday. “Then why is he eliminating the very program that does that?”